Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Hooray for the team at TOPPS.Producing, after many years of careful research and non invasive tagging, a veritable treasure trove of white shark migration info.

Fortunately for the rest of us who are not out in the field year after year struggling with meager research funds, the bureaucracies of California, and a few sad sack high visibility research carpetbaggers who drop into well known research sites to conduct ethically questionable but highly entertaining drilled fin tagging - this data is awesome.

Awesome as in, "take a break boys, you done good" kind of data, and best of all it is open source.

As you can tell we kind of disagree with Da Shark
on this one. Mark your calendars this makes a twice in a lifetime event:

"Needless to say, I very much look forward to finding out how this dovetails with Michael Domeier's multi-year tracking results, and his own interpretation of the data!"

To that statement we say, "Feh!"

The TOPP's team are good folk, they work hard, they produce data and they actually care about the critters that they have spent over two decades getting to know and study.

Once again a well deserved kudos to the whole team. So put the kettle on, pour yourself a big cuppa Joe and sit back and admire the results of long term invested research on California white sharks.

Note: Stay tuned, as of 2012 Shark Diver in tandem with other operators at Isla Guadalupe will be documenting drilled tags on white sharks. If these tags begin to degrade dorsal fins in the same horrific manner as we have seen in South Africa - there will be hell to pay.

To those who have tagged these animals and are currently parading around the world scene like the second coming of Shark Jesus we are putting you and your tags officially on notice.

Well deserved congratulations to Claudia Li and the entire conservation crew behind the Vancouver non-profit organization Shark Truth this week.

As one of the many grassroots shark conservation groups that sprang up in late 2009 Shark Truth lead the way as an Asian community initiative to stop the slaughter of sharks used for shark fin soup.

Their leadership, branding, messaging and overall community impact has been nothing short of amazing to watch.

If conservation effectiveness had a face it would be Shark Truth and we along with the rest of the conservation community thrilled to hear they have been nominated for a prestigious GLOBE Foundation award.

Take some time to reintroduce yourself with Shark Truth because this is about as good as it gets.